What happened to the money? I think the answer is fairly simple. War is an expensive business. Armies don’t hold bake sales and car washes to finance their expenses. Arafat was funding several armies such as Fatah, the Martyr’s Brigade und so weiter, I have heard the number 12, but I assume that is mythic like the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles of Jesus.

Not only that, but palestinian society, like all Arab societies, is tribal, and the cooperation of tribal chieftans must be secured with generous gifts. Further, the chaos and disintegration of Palestinian life and the “refugee camps” has created many criminal gangs of rootless young toughs whose cooperation must also be purchased.

Finally, there was lots of old fashioned stealing and coruption by the higher ups.

My bottom line is that Arafat will go the Devil with a fairly light bank account. The wife is likely a different story. I doubt that she was his wife in the sense that Harriet was Ozie’s wife. She is a Chistian and he is a Moslem. My hypothesis is that she was appointed and given the cover of wife by outside funding agencies (probably the KGB, but maybe the French* who have long historic ties with christian communities in Syria-Palestine, to start) to keep an eye on the money.

She was paid a commission on the money she handled and took out life insurance on Arafat in the form of cash deposits in her personal Swiss accounts. I am sure those accounts are fairly fat, but not nearly enough to get her into next years Forbes Magazine list. The money was all spent and the bottom line was rendered by Edwin Starr: “War, What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!”

*This may explain why he was brought to Paris to die. Instead of dying in Amman or Cairo.

“Chairman Arafat will be placed in a Tel Aviv city bus and driven to a crowded market,” said an unnamed spokesman for the Hamas social services agency. “There we will conduct the traditional scattering of his fragments. According to protocol, no friends or family will attend this ceremony.”

Another official in Paris, however, said that “the organs in the lower part of Arafat’s body have not been functioning well. …”

Clearly the euphemism was taken from a Cialis ad. Given Arafat’s condition, is this news?

Who do you suppose will represent the US at the funeral (providing there even is one of course) which seems to me a delicate matter? I suggest Bill Clinton.

1) Face down; and

2) wrapped in pigskin.

CNN openly acknowledged that it acted as a propaganda tool for Saddam. Why would it be any surprise that they retain a PLO thugette to effectively disseminate propaganda for Arafat? Watching CNN lose market share brings almost as much pleasure as looking at the circulation drops of the major DNC organs.

All the kings horses and all the kings men etc.

I think that schadenfreude is underrated.